Improv class

Just today I got a note from my friend Bethany who was once my improv student. She had a dream and my wife and I were in it and were living in her neighborhood and it got her thinking about the great time we all had in my improv class.

Just the other day I was thinking about what happens when a person takes improv to be a philosophy of life. You suddenly let go of all your worries. All you think of is the now, the moment. And when you really allow yourself to do that you see that within each moment is a choice. What do we think, what do we do not later, not tomorrow, not next year, but right now in this red hot moment.

When you sense that there is an amazing opening up of the world of unlimited horizons. That my friends is improv, a philosophy of theater and life, both of which when you come to think of it are one and the same thing.



May the pulse be with you!

Abhay

Image: Philosopher J. Krishnamurti who in his last Bombay talk told the massive crowd gathered to her him for the last time: "All time, past present and future is contained in the now."

Play Space: A Manifesto

We are guided along by an invisible force along lines of least resistance. I call this force the pulse. Improvisation involves simply following the pulse down the paths that suddenly appear before us. Artist Frank Stella calls his canvas his working space. I think that a good name for the performance space is play space. Once we tap into the pulse we can feel it vibrate, zoom up and down and sideways at times, linger lovingly on the side at others, sometimes exploding, sometimes still, filling our play space, exploring its boundaries and everything within with a taut, endless continuity.

Far too many approaches to improvisation have made up rules, rights and wrongs. Many even have the cautionary TM label attached to them. I find such approaches limiting and stifling to the natural instinct to find the pulse and follow it.

Stella sees the work of painting in terms of the need to create dynamic space using a still and two-dimensional medium. I see the work of improvisation as the creation of play space, a space where our natural instincts can play. Anything less I find unsatisfactory. Anything more is too much like work.

May the pulse be with you!
Abhay

Image: Marcel Duchamp's playful masterpiece.